Looking Back – Winter 2015

The Vietnam Memorial Wall at Norwich University, 1996

A three-quarter-size portable replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall was displayed on Disney Field during Homecoming Weekend October 2-6, 1996, in honor of the 30th reunion of the Class of 1966. Twenty-two Norwich alumni—including five members of the Class of 1966—died in that conflict. Wednesday’s opening ceremonies featured remarks by Francis X. Brennan ’64 (pictured on front cover) and Terry Van Meter ’66, two of the approximately 800 Norwich alumni who served in Southeast Asia. Made to look and feel like the black Indian granite used for the monument in Washington, D.C., the 240-foot-long replica was inscribed using the same sandblasting process as for the original in 1982. Throughout the weekend, the installation was open to members of the public, who were permitted to make rubbed impressions and leave objects, letters, and other memorabilia behind. Every 20 minutes throughout the five-day display, a wreath-laying ceremony honored the 58,175 war dead whose names are etched in the 96 panels. Objects left at the base are now a part of the Norwich University Archives’ special collections. – Editor

WANT TO KNOW WHAT THIS IS?

It was on a sheer hunch that Sean McCrystal ’17 began looking into the origins of a suit of armor believed to be of Chinese origins. The history major determined that the artifact, housed in the Sullivan Museum, had originally belonged to a Japanese samurai.